Pathogen disgust sensitivity changes according to the perceived harshness of the environment

ABSTRACT

Much research has explored behaviours that are linked with disgust sensitivity. Few studies, however, have been devoted to understanding how fixed or variable disgust sensitivity is. We therefore aimed to examine whether disgust sensitivity can change with the environment by repeatedly testing students whose environment was not changing as well as student cadets undergoing intensive training at an army camp. We found that an increase in the perceived harshness of the environment was associated with a decrease in pathogen disgust sensitivity. Our results support the idea that disgust sensitivity is malleable depending on the environment. More specifically, we propose that in a harsh environment, where survival may be more difficult, pathogen disgust sensitivity may decrease to allow the consumption of available resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Disgust sensitivity
• pathogen disgust
• sexual disgust
• moral disgust
• environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Carlota Batres http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3833-7667

Notes

1 The same pattern of results was found if stress was excluded from the factor analysis, which then produced a single change in perceived hardship factor loading on all change measures >0.69. This single factor continued to correlate with pathogen disgust change but not with sexual disgust change or moral disgust change.